Si Muove
by Rez1
Summary: Arvin Sloane likes giving people things, when he can. Sloane, Allison Doren.


Title: Si Muove (PG-13)  
  
Author: Rez  
  
Spoilers: through 3.06, "The Nemesis"  
  
Summary: Whose son? Sark, Sloane, Allison. And Rambaldi.  
  
Feedback: Always welcome, always acknowledged: lo_rez @ adelphia.net  
  
A/N: From Lazarey to Lazarus; and then it gets really strange. Speculation on Sloane's self-image, Sark's parentage, and what Rambaldi means to Allison Doren; set during the missing two years. Thanks to Auburn and Vanzetti for discussion and speculation about Crazy Uncle Arvin and the mysterious blue-eyed boy, Mr. Sark.  
  
*  
  
*  
  
A thousand prophets are born and die, millennia of blood creep by and now, at last, the thousand-and-first, and the promise of something new: of peace.   
  
It's only a matter of will.   
  
*  
  
The body is still and dark as a stone, as though it had never lived or moved or loved.  
  
"…such extensive trauma to the organism," the biochemist is saying. "It just isn't really… possible. The formula—we have no reason to think—"  
  
They've raised it to a seated posture. The graceful shape of the shaven skull is poised inside a curving steel frame that holds great blocks of solid circuitry above its target. The torso rests in a transparent cage of sterile gel, a cradle for the shredded, unfeeling flesh.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Sloane," the other man says. "If it'd been a single shot—maybe. But three, at such close range…" There's a silence filled with machine noise, soft and cool.  
  
"We've done the blood change, for what it's worth. We introduced the formula over twenty-four hours ago and—nothing." The man shrugs at the bags suspended from the wheeled stand, the dark-red tubing snaking down through a port in the tempered glass and into the body below. The terrible wounds are neatly covered.   
  
We sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, and the days of punishment have been endless.  
  
The monitors above show tranquility. The brain is all but silent, the torn heart and lungs patched and moving only by the grace of more circuitry, other machines. The skin is ashen. There is a pretty, shapely hand visible through the glass shell. It is slack.  
  
She's been a good, strong subject. Perhaps the success of this experiment will help her accept the failure of the last one. It's immaterial; her role is fixed, but he enjoys giving people things, when he can. He hopes the boy will be pleased, too, when he finally emerges. Though it may be awhile.  
  
There's been so much suffering but soon enough the healing will begin. Imagine it, Emily, he says silently, and sighs a little, as always when he thinks of her. He does feel compassion. Perhaps people will even understand that, one day—but that also is unimportant.   
  
"We just don't think it's possible," the other man repeats. "The organ damage alone—"  
  
He knows there's a little smile sitting at one corner of his mouth. The body before him fills his vision in the same way that absolute certainty fills his mind and his heart. The man beside him coughs suddenly.  
  
Oh my God, he hears, and the face framed by the steel arc changes as he'd dreamed it would. Muscles tighten. The skin flushes slowly, the deathly gray washing to a deeper, richer color. She was lovely, though only a copy, and will be again. He looks up and sees life bloom in orange and red on the monitor, first faintly, then wonderfully, beautifully, marvelously. His eyesight blurs for a moment.  
  
"A malfunction." The doctor's voice is tight with unbelief. "—Electronic anomaly." More orange, more red, beautiful asymmetry as each lobe of the brain takes up its proper burden. "Impossible."  
  
Yet it moves, he thinks, and has the urge to laugh. The other man has run to the door, is shouting down the corridor. Data collection is critical, of course.  
  
He permits himself a taste of personal triumph, but only a taste. The boy is stubborn but truly brilliant; his father's son indeed. His the insight that teased out the formula from its hiding-place in the massive journal; his the conjecture that led to its synthesis. He imagines the young man, oceans away, leaning listless against the wall of a chilly room not unlike this one, perhaps—the subject, himself, of endless observation, every breath recorded by men who, like these here with him, have no idea what they're looking at. Do you see? he says to the blue eyes. And: Patience.   
  
But he himself is now restless, as always when success is assured. There's so much more to do.  
  
At the edge of his vision he catches a tiny skittering motion: the toes flexing, perhaps. The eyeballs are moving under the delicate skin of the eyelids.   
  
Around him the doctor and his fellows jostle, spitting questions like a white-coated Inquisition, but only at each other. They ignore the figure on the bed; it's an outrage, a transgression. They hate it as a heresy, he thinks, amused.  
  
He leans forward because there's more, suddenly. The eyelids flicker; the mouth acquires the tension of pain. It opens in a gasp and the eyes too are open; there's a flash of the sclera, shining white, and now they're wide with fear but also dark and alive with intelligence, questioning and alert as they search his face and then the room beyond. There was never any doubt. He lets the laugh come, a quiet shudder of sound.  
  
And yes, it moves.  
  
[End]  
  
November 14, 2003  
  
A/N: The quotes are from the prophet Hosea (c. 8th C. BCE) and (apocryphally) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), born 68 years after the death (ha!) of the fictional Milo Rambaldi. 


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